J.L. Austin, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The whole apparatus of sense-data — the alleged private mental objects of which we are supposedly directly aware in perception — is a philosopher's construction, built on confusions masquerading as analysis.12 The argument from illusion, used by Ayer and others to motivate the apparatus, equivocates on "looks" and "seems," confuses cases of authentic perception under unusual conditions with cases of hallucination, and treats the language of perception as if it were the technical vocabulary of a pseudo-science.
There is no such object as a sense-datum; what we ordinarily and correctly say is that we see a duck, in poor light, and the duck looks (in this light) like a decoy. The "looks" reports a relation between perceiver and the duck; it does not introduce a new metaphysical object.34
But however that may be, the official state of play at this point is that we are confronted with a linguistic question: are we to say that the objects we directly perceive are sense-data?— and that the argument from illusion has given us no compelling reason for choosing to say this.Sense and Sensibilia, pp. 94–96
He then concludes ('it follows') that 'at least one of the visual appearances of the stick is delusive'. Nevertheless, even when 'what we see is not the real quality of a material thing, it is supposed that we are still seeing something'—and this something is to be called a 'sense-datum'. A sense-datum is to be 'the object of which we are directly aware, in perception, if itis not part of any material thing'.Sense and Sensibilia, pp. 31–32
To rule out other people and other times is not to rule out uncertainty altogether, or every possibility of being challenged and perhaps proved wrong. It is perhaps even clearer that the way things look is, in general, just as much a fact about the world, just as open to public confirmation or challenge, as the way things are.Sense and Sensibilia, pp. 53–54
These seem to be rather serious deficiencies. YER, OF COURSE, DOES NOT HIMSELF ACCEPT the argument from illusion, or the supporting bit of argument that we have just considered, at face value and without reservations. The arguments he has expounded, he says, need to be 'evaluated', and the evaluation of them is what he next undertakes.t We must consider what he says.Sense and Sensibilia, pp. 65–66
Austin's most ferocious sustained critique. Ayer and the sense-datum tradition were the dominant epistemological framework when Sense and Sensibilia was delivered. Modern disjunctivism (McDowell, Snowdon, Travis, Hinton) substantially agrees: there is no common factor between veridical perception and hallucination. The Robinson revival is the active opposition. The destructive critique is widely held to land; the positive question — what then is perceptual experience? — Austin did not himself give a worked-out answer to.